Central bank technology projects usually end with a report. In July 2026, Project Agorá ended with settled transactions — real value, real currencies, real institutions — and that distinction is the reason the exercise deserves attention. What happened Twenty-eight financial institutions and central banks across Asia, Europe and North America completed real-value transactions totalling approximately…

India’s Digital Personal Data Protection regime has spent three years as a statute without operational deadlines. That ends on 13 November 2026, when the Consent Manager framework under Rule 4 becomes live — the first hard, date-bound obligation the regime imposes on anyone. What a consent manager actually is The DPDP Act was passed in…

India is close to concluding the largest trade agreement in its history and simultaneously stuck on a much smaller one. The contrast says something useful about where New Delhi’s leverage now lies. Three deals, three states of play Partner Status Notes United Kingdom In force Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement live; more than US$140 million…

Japan’s central bank did nothing on 31 July, and that was the whole story. The Bank of Japan left its policy rate at 1% — the highest since 1995 — while the yen sat at a four-decade low against the dollar and the finance ministry appeared to be buying the currency to slow its slide.…

Putin Courts ASEAN: Inside the Kazan Commemorative Summit Russia used a summit in the Tatar city of Kazan on 18 June 2026 to make its most visible push yet to work its way further into the Indo-Pacific’s economic and diplomatic architecture. Ten of ASEAN’s eleven member states sent leaders, even with Western sanctions on Moscow…

Jakarta Opens an International Financial Centre — and Taps Panda Bonds to Fund It Indonesia is making a real push to build itself into a serious regional financial centre, with two developments in mid-2026 pointing toward ambitions to compete more directly with Singapore and Hong Kong for cross-border capital. Indonesia’s Parliament approved the government’s proposal…

ASEAN Sets Its Sights on Antitrust: The 2026–2030 Competition Roadmap Amid the headline trade and geopolitical announcements from the 48th ASEAN Summit, a quieter initiative emerged that could matter more over time: a new Roadmap on Competition and Consumer Protection covering 2026 to 2030, aimed at building real cross-border coordination among the bloc’s ten national…

Indonesia’s Disinformation Bill Tests the Line Between Sovereignty and Speech Indonesia is advancing legislation aimed at countering what officials call foreign-driven disinformation, joining a growing list of Southeast Asian jurisdictions tightening legal control over online content, with implications that go well past domestic politics. The bill, which has moved through the legislative process in 2026,…

Japan Draws the Line on Taiwan — and Pulls the Philippines Closer A diplomatic rupture between Japan and China that started with an off-the-cuff remark last November has, by mid-2026, settled into a steady pattern of maritime pressure and defence realignment across Northeast and Southeast Asia. The friction goes back to comments by Japanese Prime…

Washington Cuts India’s Tariff to 10% — Reshuffling Asia’s Export Pecking Order A fast-moving sequence of US trade rulings has left India’s tariff position with Washington genuinely unsettled, with real consequences for how global buyers split sourcing across Asia’s competing manufacturing hubs. Under a US-India interim trade agreement announced in February 2026, India’s reciprocal tariff…